Archive for the 'Prophecy' Category

Poem: Tu ne quaesieris

Published
by
peter
on 2009-09-26
in Prophecy and poetry
. Closed

Ode I:XI of Horace, Tu ne quaesieris (translated by David West), ending with the advice, carpe diem.

Don’t you ask, Leuconoe – the gods do not wish it to be known -
what end they have given me or to you, and don’t meddle with
Babylonian horoscopes. How much better to accept whatever comes,
whether Jupiter gives us other winters or whether this is our last

now wearying out the Tyrrhenian sea on the pumice stones
opposing it. Be wise, strain the wine and cut back long hope
into a small space. Even as we speak, envious time
flies past. Harvest the day and leave as little as possible for tomorrow.

Reference:

Horace [1997 AD/23 BCE]: The Complete Odes and Epodes. Translation by David West. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press.

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Nicolas Fatio de Duillier

Published
by
peter
on 2009-09-14
in History, Mathematics, Prophecy and Religion
. Closed

Fatio de DuillierNicolas Fatio de Duillier (1664-1753) was a Genevan mathematician and polymath, who for a time in the 1680s and 1690s, was a close friend of Isaac Newton. After coming to London in 1687, he became a Fellow of the Royal Society (on 1688-05-15), as later did his brother Jean-Christophe (on 1706-04-03).  He played a major part in Newton’s feud with Leibniz over who had invented the differential calculus, and was a protagonist all his life for Newton’s thought and ideas.  

 

Continue reading ‘Nicolas Fatio de Duillier’

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Social forecasting: Doppio Software

Published
by
peter
on 2009-09-08
in Decision theory, Forecasting, Manufacturing, Prophecy and market planning
. 1 Comment

Five years ago, back in the antediluvian era of Web 2.0 (the web as enabler and facilitator of social networks), we had the idea of  social-network forecasting.  We developed a product to enable a group of people to share and aggregate their forecasts of something, via the web.  Because reducing greenhouse gases were also becoming flavour-du-jour, we applied these ideas to social forecasts of the price for the European Union’s carbon emission permits, in a nifty product we called Prophets-360.  Sadly, due mainly to poor regulatory design of the European carbon emission market, supply greatly outstripped demand for emissions permits, and the price of permits fell quickly and has mostly stayed fallen.  A flat curve is not difficult to predict, and certainly there was little value in comparing one person’s forecast with that of another.  Our venture was also felled.

But now the second generation of social networking forecasting tools has arrived.  I see that a French start-up, Doppio Software, has recently launched publicly.   They appear to have a product which has several advantages over ours:

  • Doppio Software is focused on forecasting demand along a supply chain.  This means the forecasting objective is very tactical, not the long-term strategic forecasting that CO2 emission permit prices became.   In the present economic climate, short-term tactical success is certainly more compelling to business customers than even looking five years hence.
  • The relevant social network for a supply chain is a much stronger community of interest than the amorphous groups we had in mind for Prophets-360.  Firstly, this community already exists (for each chain), and does not need to be created.  Secondly, the members of the community by definition have differential access to information, on the basis of their different positions up and down the chain.  Thirdly, although the interests of the partners in a supply chain are not identical, these interests are mutually-reinforcing:  everyone in the chain benefits if the chain itself is more successful at forecasting throughput.
  • In addition, Team Doppio (the Doppiogangers?) appear to have included a very compelling value-add:  their own automated modeling of causal relationships between the target demand variables of each client and general macro-economic variables, using  semantic-web data and qualitative modeling technologies from AI.  Only the largest manufacturing companies can afford their own econometricians, and such people will normally only be able to hand-craft models for the most important variables.  There are few companies IMO who would not benefit from Doppio’s offer here. 

Of course, I’ve not seen the Doppio interface and a lot will hinge on its ease-of-use (as with all software aimed at business users).  But this offer appears to be very sophisticated, well-crafted and compelling, combining social network forecasting, intelligent causal modeling and semantic web technologies.   

Well done, Team Doppio!  I wish you every success with this product!

PS:  I have just learnt that “doppio” means “double”, which makes it a very apposite name for this application – forecasts considered by many people, across their human network.  Neat!  (2009-09-16)

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Newton and scientific publication

Published
by
peter
on 2009-08-06
in History, Mathematics, Prophecy, Religion and Science
. Closed

While on the subject of Isaac Newton, here are several statements by historian Scott Mandelbrote on Newton’s attitude to the public dissemination of his work.  The more we know of Newton, the less we should consider him a scientist in the modern meaning of the word.

His [theological investigation] was a voyage of personal discovery; even the Principia required Halley’s exertions as a midwife to bring them to light.  Newton might share his religious opinions with other members of the remnant, as he did in his letters to Locke, but he worried about the consequences of their wider dissemination:  ‘I was of opinion my papers had lain still & am sorry to heare there is news about them.  Let me entreat you to stop their translation & impression so soon as  you can for I designe to suppress them.‘  Newton’s concern may have reflected fear of being discovered to hold unorthodox  opinions, but it was also the product of religious motives.  Not everyone could be expected to comprehend ’strong meat’, which was  intended for personal consumption, and which might be wasted on others.” (p.299)

His [Newton's] theology pervaded his alchemy, in his analysis of the Emerald Tablets of Hermes Trismegistus, and in turn  his alchemy suggested to him how matter might be understood physically.  A true understanding of the uses of language enabled  Newton to introduce astronomical calculation into his chronological writings, and to complete his mathematical arguments with theological references:

[pagebreak]
. . . .  

Mathematics was God’s language; the language of the prophets communicated God’s purposes and ‘times’ to men.  Newton felt it was his duty to understand and to reconcile the two, to decipher the hieroglyphs which corrupted religion and learning had obscured.   The problems of mathematics ended in the solutions of divine majesty, and mathematical language solved the theological problem of describing Newton’s Arian interpretation of the relations within the Trinity:

. . . 

Newton’s natural philosophical and theological discoveries removed the obscurities from divine language, in the books of nature and of scripture.  In the life of the true believer, the two could not be separated.  But most had to be content with the milk for babes, because Newton’s own language was beyond them.” (pp. 300-301).

Reference:

Scott Mandelbrote [1993]:  ‘A dute of the greatest moment’: Isaac Newton and the writing of biblical criticism. British Journal of the History of Science, 26:  281-302.




Chasing the sources: a Newtonian mystery

Published
by
peter
on 2009-08-06
in History, Prophecy and Science
. 1 Comment

As is well-known to historians (although less so among scientists), Isaac Newton was a devout religious believer, an alchemist, and a seeker after ancient wisdom about God and the cosmos.   He was a Unitarian, a belief not permitted at the time, and so he kept his religious views very, very close to himself and to a small circle of intimates.  When his friend and fellow FRS, Nicolas Fatio de Duiller, publicly supported the millenarian French Protestant sect, the Camisards (aka The French Prophets), in London in the first decade of the 18th century, Newton kept in touch with him to learn of their prophecies, and came close to publicly supporting them also.  

So when an historian writes the following it is very plausible, at least to people aware of Newton’s religious beliefs and interests:

Isaac Newton (1642-1727) was also enamored of Egyptian wisdom, as we shall see in the next chapter, even if it is not clear that he accepted the Hermetic tradition.  It was essential for his theory of gravitation to have an accurate measure of the world’s circumference, and for that he needed to calculate exactly a single degree of latitude.  Newton was convinced that there was no need to send a team of surveyors to plot distances on the ground, as the French were doing.  It was rather easier to determine the exact length of an Egyptian cubit, which ancient authors insisted was directly related to a degree of latitude.   This information could be obtained from the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, which was always believed (perhaps rightly) to enshrine perfect units of length, area and volume, as well as pi.  Sadly, the results of the Pyramid experiment did not fit Newton’s calculations, but, instead of scrapping the theory, the great scientist blamed the surveyors instead.   As luck would have it, the French astronomer Jean Picard (1620-82) succeeded in 1671 in measuring perfectly a degree of latitude in Sweden, so Newton could prove his theory of gravitation without the Egyptians.” (Katz 2005, page 31)

The reference the author David Katz cites for this story is Shalev 2002.  But consulting that reference, we do not see mentioned the story Katz relates here.  Instead, we find this sentence (on page 574): 

As Robert Palter has argued in his critique on Bernal’s  Black Athena, there is no evidence to show that Newton related his interest in the Egyptian cubit to his physics and geodesy.”

with the reference being to Palter 1993, pages 245 and following.

What is going on here?  Has Katz mistakenly cited the wrong source for the story above, something easy enough to do in academic writing?   Perhaps Katz could tell us.  I hope it is a simple mistake in citation, and not something more sinister.

References:

David S. Katz [2005]: The Occult Tradition:  From the Renaissance to the Present Day.  (London, UK: Jonathan Cape).

Robert Palter [1993]:  Black Athena, Afro-Centrism, and the history of science. History of Science, 31: 227-287.

Zur Shalev [2002]:  Measurer of all things: John Greaves (1602-1652), the Great Pyramid and early modern metrology. Journal of the History of Ideas, 63: 555-575.

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How environment shapes cosmology

Published
by
peter
on 2009-07-01
in History, Mathematics, Prophecy and Science
. 1 Comment

Further to the post below about the relationship between language and thought, a friend has just remarked to me that the absolute (East-West-North-South) spatial reference system in the language of the Kuuk Thaayorre is in fact a relative system, relative to the magnetic poles or (since they are unlikely to have known about the poles) relative to the movements of the sun.  Accordingly, such a language would have been unlikely to have developed in parts of the world with continuous cloud cover.   Which observation brought to mind a famous article by French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincare, where he considered what type of mathematical physics humans may have  developed if the earth had been always covered in cloud:  no theory aiming to predict the return of meteors, no models of planetary motion, not much study of ellipses and related number theory, and perhaps a theory of gravitation long delayed.  (Thanks:  DW).

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The future is not what it was

Published
by
peter
on 2009-06-07
in Computer technology, Consumer Behaviour, Culture, Forecasting, Prophecy and Telecommunications
. Closed

The Internet, as imagined in 1969, complete with free sexism. (Hat tip:  SW).




On prophecy

Published
by
peter
on 2009-03-31
in Decision theory, History, Prophecy and Religion
. Closed

They know not what to make of the Words, little time, speedily, shortly, suddenly, soon. They would have me define the Time, in the Prophecies of my ancient Servants. Yet those Predictions carried in them my authority, and were fulfilled soon enough, for those that suffered under them . . . I have seen it best, not to assign the punctual Times, by their Definition among Men; that I might keep Men always in their due distance, and reverential Fear of invading what I reserve, in secret, to myself . . . The Tower-Guns are the Tormenta e Turre aethera, with which this City I have declared should be battered . . . I have not yet given a Key to Time in this Revelation.”

John Lacy, explaining to his followers among a millenarian French Huguenot sect in Britain in 1707 why his prophecies had not yet been fulfilled, cited in Schwartz 1980, p. 99.

Reference:

Hillel Schwartz [1980]:  The French Prophets: The History of a Millenarian Group in Eighteenth-Century England (Berkeley, CA, USA: University of California Press)

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The decade around 1664

Published
by
peter
on 2009-03-29
in Culture, History, Probability theory, Prophecy, Science and Uncertainty
. Closed

We noted before that one consequence of the rise of coffee-houses in 17th-century Europe was the development of probability theory as a mathematical treatment of reasoning with uncertainty.   Ian Hacking’s history of the emergence of probabilistic ideas in Europe has a nice articulation of the key events, all of which took place a decade either side of 1664:

  • 1654:  Pascal wrote to Fermat with his ideas about probability
  • 1657: Huygens wrote the first textbook on probability to be published, and Pascal was the first to apply probabilitiy ideas to problems other than games of chance
  • 1662: The Port Royal Logic was the first publication to mention numerical measurements of something called probability, and Leibniz applied probability to problems in legal reasoning
  • 1662:  London merchant John Gaunt published the first set of statistics drawn from records of mortality
  • Late 1660s:  Probability theory was used by John Hudde and by Johan de Witt in Amsterdam to provide a sound basis for reasoning about annuities (Hacking 1975, p.11).

Developments in the use of symbolic algebra in Italy in the 16th-century provided the technical basis upon which a formal theory of uncertainty could be erected.  And coffee-houses certainly aided the dissemination of probabilistic ideas, both in spoken and written form.   Coffee houses may even have aided the creation of these ideas – new mathematical concepts are only rarely created by a solitary person working alone in a garret, but usually arise instead through conversation and debate among people with partial or half-formed ideas.  

However, one aspect of the rise of probability in the mid 17th century is still a mystery to me:  what event or phenomena led so many people across Europe to be interested in reasoning about uncertainty at this time?  Although 1664 saw the establishment of a famous brewery in Strasbourg, I suspect the main motivation was the prevalence of bubonic plague in Europe.   Although plague had been around for many centuries, the Catholic vs. Protestant religious wars of the previous 150 years had, I believe, led many intelligent people to abandon or lessen their faith in religious explanations of uncertain phenomena.   Rene Descartes, for example, was led to cogito, ergo sum when seeking beliefs which peoples of all faiths or none could agree on.  Without religion, alternative models to explain or predict human deaths, morbidity and natural disasters were required.   The insurance of ocean-going vessels provided a financial incentive for finding good predictive models of such events.

Hacking notes (pp. 4-5) that, historically, probability theory has mostly developed in response to problems about uncertain reasoning in other domains:  In the 17th century, these were problems in insurance and annuities, in the 18th, astronomy, the 19th, biometrics and statistical mechanics, and the early 20th, agricultural experiments.  For more on the connection between statistical theory and experiments in agriculture, see Hogben (1957).  For the relationship of 20th-century probability theory to statistical physics, see von Plato (1994).

References:

Ian Hacking [1975]:  The Emergence of Probability: a Philosophical study of early ideas about Probability, Induction and Statistical Inference. London, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Lancelot Hogben [1957]: Statistical Theory. W. W. Norton.

J. von Plato [1994]:  Creating Modern Probability:  Its Mathematics, Physics and Philosophy in Historical Perspective.  Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory.  Cambridge, UK:  Cambridge University Press.   Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction, and Decision Theory.




Old, beardy revolutionaries wielding spreadsheets

Published
by
peter
on 2009-02-06
in Globalization, Manufacturing, Prophecy and economics
. 4 Comments

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If you were aiming to model global, 21st-century capitalism, the obvious place to start would not be with a model of the firm based on mid-Victorian Lancashire textile manufacturing companies.   Firstly, the textile industry developed in Lancashire in the 18th century because only here (and almost nowhere else) was the climate sufficiently conducive for the then leading-edge technology to operate successfully.  (The air needed sufficient dampness, but not heat, for the cotton fibres not to be broken by the early textile machines.)   Technology in most industries has progressed so much in the two centuries since that very few industries are now tied to specific climates.     So industries are mostly not tied to place any more.

Secondly, large swathes of  work – even most work undertaken in companies described as manufacturers – is not anything a Victorian economist would recognize as manufacturing.  Rather it would be better described as symbol analysis and manipulation.  A relative of mine recently embarked on training as a surface-materials mixer for a road-building company – a great job, all done inside in an airconditioned office, mixing different ingredients and assessing the results, achieved by moving graphic objects around on a computer screen.  Of course, some person still has to be outside moving and switching on the automated machinery which actually lays the road surface once it has been created, so not every task is symbol processing.     But mixing is no longer done by eye, by a man using using a shovel in front of a furnace.  The relevant attribute of symbol manipulation – unlike, say the operation of a loom – is that this too is something no longer tied to place, thanks to our global telecommunications infrastructure and to digitisation.  Thus, the processing of US insurance claims can move from Hoboken, New Jersey, to Bangalore and Mauritius, and then maybe back again, if circumstances so dictate.

Thirdly, for companies whose sole business involves symbol manipulation - eg, banks, investment firms, graphics designers, media companies, software developers, consultancy companies, etc - the economics of traditional manufacturing industry no longer applies.  Information is a product whose value increases as more people use it, and whose marginal costs of production can decline to zero with multiple users.  It costs Microsoft  between US$1 and $2 billion to develop the first copy of each new generation of its Windows operating system, but less than $1 each for the second and subsequent copies;  the cost of producing these subsequent copies comprises only the cost of the media used to store the product (a DVD or a filestore).   (Of course, I am not including the cost of marketing and distribution in this statement of the cost of production.)  Similarly, a well-crafted, well-timed IPO and financial plan may raise (to cite the case of one IPO whose writing we led) US$5 billion on the world’s capital markets if successful, and nothing at all if less-well crafted or placed at a different time.  These information-economy attributes also apply to those parts of so-called manufacturing companies which undertake symbol manipulation:  the design team of Mazda cars for example, which relocated from Japan to the UK because London is a world-centre of art, design and marketing, or the 2-man in-house forex-trading desk which two decades ago first enriched and then almost bankrupted Australia’s largest defence electronics firm, AWA.  

So, although I do not share the sentiment, I think it fine for someone to express a personal dislike of an alleged bonus culture in our banks and financial sector companies, as Alex Goodall has done.  But to argue against this feature of our modern world using a micro-economic model based on mid-Victorian manufacturing would seem inappropriate.   Much as I admire Karl Marx for his startling and still-interesting contributions to the 250-year-old conversation that is economic theory, for his insightful criticisms of the world he knew, and for his desire to make that world better for all, his model of the firm describes almost nothing about the world of 21st-century business that I know.

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